Luke and Emma were just stepping onto the sidewalk when Lanie descended the steps.
Emma jumped up and down and waved to Lanie. Luke looked like a man who wanted to leave the country. Town matriarch, genteel Caroline Brantley stopped and laid her hand on Emma’s cheek. Emma turned her bottom toward Miss Caroline and pretended to sting her. Miss Caroline threw back her head and laughed with delight. She patted Luke’s arm before moving on.
“Lanie! Here I am!” Emma called.
“I see you.” Lanie bent to accept her hug.
“Buzzz!” She bumped Lanie’s leg with her little soft sculpture stinger.
“Ouch! You stung me,” Lanie said.
“I stinged Father Greg too!”
“Yes,” Luke said wearily. “You’ve done a fine job of stinging today.” Emma stung Luke, probably not for the first time, before turning her attention back to Lanie.
“I’m going to Beau’s house. I’ll see the Easter bunny and find eggs.”
“No kidding? Guess what? I’m going to Beau’s house too.” She’d known they were going. She’d made Emma’s chocolate place card. But lots of people were going.
“Yea!” Emma turned to Luke. “Lanie’s going to Beau’s!”
“I heard. Do you think she’s going to have her picture taken with the Easter bunny?”
Just then, Miley Sanders and her little girl, Teresa, walked by in their matching floral mother/daughter dresses. Emma studied them for a second.
“Lanie, can you be the same as me?”
“Hmm. That might be fun. But I don’t have a honeybee suit.”
“My daddy will buy you one.”
Lanie looked at Luke, who rolled his eyes and looked heavenward.
“That might be nice,” Lanie said. “But all the stores are closed and there’s no place to buy a honeybee suit today.”
“Oh.” Emma looked disappointed.
“I might have another idea. We wouldn’t be exactly the same, but I have a blue dress and you have your beautiful new blue dress. We could go home and put them on before we go to Beau’s.”
“I’m ’posed to be honeybee.”
“And you already have been. You’ve done a wonderful job of being honeybee. Now you can be the girl who wears her new blue dress.”
She considered for a moment. “Okay.”
Luke’s eyes met Lanie’s. “Okay? Just like that? Do you have any idea what I’ve been through this morning?”
“I might,” Lanie said.
• • •
The weather was a picture perfect southern spring day — blue sky, light breeze, and just warm enough. There had to be a hundred people in Missy Bragg’s back yard. After changing into her blue dress, Lanie had helped Luke get Emma ready and he’d apparently thought all was right with them again. When he suggested they ride together to the party, she’d thanked him but said she needed to go independently.
Now, she sat at one of the tables for six with Nathan, Tolly, and Brantley Kincaid, Missy’s best friend from childhood, who was in town for the weekend. Lanie liked Brantley — everyone did — but, though it wasn’t fair and he’d never given her any reason, she was never entirely comfortable around him. He was too much. Too blond, too good looking, too charming — just like Alexander had been.
Having already been though the buffet, they had plates of ham, hot rolls, and cold salads. The children were sitting at a long table under a tent, with the Easter Bunny himself seated at the head in a throne.
“Who’s in that rabbit suit?” Lanie asked.
“My quarterback, Kirby Lawson,” Nathan said. “Missy is paying him a hundred dollars.”
Brantley said, “Missy tried to make me do it for free but I told her I’d just head on back to Nashville if she was going to insist on that.”
“I’m surprised to see you here,” Tolly said to Brantley. “I thought you’d be having lunch with your dad and Miss Caroline.”
“We had breakfast together,” Brantley said. He frowned and looked around. “Where’s Lucy? I thought Missy said she’d be here.”
“She went to Mississippi to spend Easter with her parents,” Tolly said. “It was a last minute thing.”
“Well, tell her I said — ” He broke off, Lucy forgotten. “Hey!” Brantley waved at someone. Oh, damn. It was Luke, looking for a place to sit. “Luke! Over here. We’ve got room.” Missy had mentioned that Luke and Brantley had been fraternity brothers at Vanderbilt, but Lanie had forgotten until now.
Luke approached and looked around the table. “Are you sure?” He met Lanie’s eyes and seemed to be asking for her permission. Well, she would neither grant nor deny. She dropped her eyes.
“Sit!” Brantley jumped to his feet and extended his hand. They shook, and then closed in on each other and did that thing men do instead of hugging — clapping hands in the vicinity of shoulders. After a second, Nathan stood and offered his hand.
“I didn’t go to church,” Brantley said to Luke, “but I hear that Emma was quite the star of the show in her bee suit.”
“Sorry I missed that,” Tolly said. “I was hiding three hundred eggs.”
“Well … ” Luke studied his plate. “It was quite the morning. Lanie got her to change into her Easter dress before coming here.”
Tolly laughed. “Harris and I have a cousin whose little boy wore his Batman Halloween costume every day until the hood wouldn’t fit on his head.”
“How long did that take?” Luke asked.
“Close to a year.”
Luke groaned and almost smiled. He let his eyes drift to Lanie. She looked away. He needed to remember she was mad at him.
“So.” Luke raised an eyebrow in Brantley’s direction. “You don’t have what was hanging on your arm last time I saw you.”
“Miss Rita May Sanderson is, at this moment, in Nashville, Tennessee,” Brantley said. “Or I guess she is. She does not approve of the way I do business so we are no longer keeping company.”
Tolly and Lanie laughed, more at Brantley’s charming vernacular than at his plight, but none of them liked Brantley’s on-again-off-again girlfriend. Missy actively detested her.
“Still or again?” Tolly asked.
“Who can even tell?” Brantley replied, looking around. “Looks like they’ve turned the kids loose.”
A swarm of small pastel bodies gathered around Missy, who was giving out little yellow baskets.
“I guess I’d better go.” Luke started to rise.
“You don’t have to,” Tolly said. “Missy hired some teenagers to herd them.”
Luke looked doubtful but he settled back into his chair.
“Can I get anybody anything?” Nathan rose. “That dessert table is calling my name.” He laid his hand on Lanie’s shoulder.
“I’ll go with you,” Brantley said, vacating the chair between Lanie and Tolly. “I don’t mind telling
you
to shut up where my love life is concerned.”
“You won’t have to,” Nathan said, “because I don’t care.” Lanie watched Nathan walk away. She felt Luke watching her watch him. She smiled and licked her lips. For all he knew, maybe they had changed their minds and were really dating now.
“You’ve been busy this week,” Luke addressed her directly, forcing her to look at him or be blatantly rude. “I guess you’re glad Easter is over.”
“I am.” Lanie took a sip of her iced tea.
“I wonder what Missy would have done if it had rained,” Luke said.
“It wouldn’t have,” Tolly responded. “Mother Nature follows the orders of Missy Bragg, as do we all. She always gets her way.”
“Maybe I should have her conjure me up a nanny,” Luke said.
“She’d do it,” Tolly said. “She’d have Mary Poppins herself here in no time.”
Just then, Nathan and Brantley returned carrying six plates of assorted desserts.
“We brought a lot,” Nathan said and set a slice of chocolate pound cake in front of Lanie. “That’s what you like, isn’t it?” He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Honey.” She had to remind him that if he couldn’t act more natural, not to lay it on so thick.
“It’s fine.” Lanie pulled the cake toward her. “Thank you.”
“But you don’t eat — ” Luke said.
“It’s fine,”
Lanie repeated emphatically.
Luke looked like he might have argued had Emma not rushed toward him.
“Daddy!” She threw herself into his arms, as if she hadn’t seen him for months. A familiar hollow feeling overtook Lanie again.
“I got this one for you!” Emma reached into her basket and gave him one of the three plastic eggs there.
“Did you?” Luke kissed her brow. “Just for me?”
“Yes!” When she giggled all the adults joined in.
Hollow. Lanie would never have this — never. Across the way, Beau called out to Missy and ran to her with his arms outstretched. Just as she bent to pick him up, Harris charged in, picked up Beau, and leaned into Missy. Clearly he didn’t want her to lift the heavy child in her condition. Missy and Harris hugged Beau between then and exchanged smiles, no doubt picturing next Easter when Beau would have a little brother or sister.
Hollow. Easters, Christmases, Halloweens — so many times when hollow would turn to physical pain. It was bad enough now but soon Missy would have her new baby. Eventually, Tolly and Lucy would marry and more babies would follow. Then Lanie’s younger brothers and sisters would begin to produce nieces and nephews. She swallowed the lump in her throat. At best, she’d be the wacky aunt who spoiled the children in her life with excessive gifts and outings.
“I’ll take my egg to work and put it on my desk so I can see it every day,” Luke said to Emma.
“Okay.” Emma climbed down from his lap and ran behind Nathan’s chair to get to her. “Lanie! I got this one for you!” And she held out a bright pink egg.
“For me?” Lanie lifted Emma into her arms and took the egg. Her eyes moistened and she quickly blinked and buried her face in Emma’s baby sweet curls. Emma accepted the cuddle but she was way too excited to linger.
As she watched Emma run back to the other children, Lanie caught Luke looking at her as if he was trying to figure something out. Tolly followed his gaze, then turned to look at Nathan and wrinkled her forehead.
Lanie placed a bit of cake in her mouth, just to have something to do.
• • •
It was after eight o’clock by the time Lanie got home. Most of the guests had left by four, but she and Tolly had stayed to help Missy and Harris clean up. Later, as they had all lingered around the kitchen table eating ham sandwiches, drinking wine, and laughing, it occurred to Lanie that she was an outsider. They were all family. If she had spoken this, they would have scoffed. Scoffing, however, didn’t alter the facts. She would never have this.
She changed out of her blue dress into black yoga pants and a pink t-shirt. Not that she did yoga. Who had time? She went downstairs to her office to do the paperwork that she hated.
Her head began to pound even before the computer finished booting up. She removed the elastic band from her ponytail and shook her head until her hair spilled around her face. It was so tempting to turn the computer off again and go make a batch of something, anything. But if she didn’t order supplies — couverture, muscovado sugar, and metallic dusting powders — she would find herself with some empty cases in a few days. Plus, she wanted some new shell molds.
So much to do. She needed to pay some bills — business and personal. And she really should order a new dress for the Breast Ball before Tolly could make her go shopping, which would be a special kind of hell. Maybe later she would log onto the Nordstrom site and look at dresses, but first bills.
She removed her checkbook and the manila folder of invoices from her desk drawer. She had just opened the folder when she heard the door to the stairwell open, followed by barely discernible footsteps in the hall. She minimized the computer screen just as Luke strolled into her office, carrying a baby monitor and two beers.
No wonder his footsteps had been so quiet. He was barefoot. He looked fresh from the shower and he wore running shorts and a t-shirt that was at least a size too small. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe he intended for it to hug his broad shoulders to remind the world that his body wasn’t just lanky — it was strong and muscular too. She crossed her arms over her chest like armor. No matter how good he looked, he need not think he was going to kiss her again.
Without speaking a word, he folded his tall form into the chair across from her, set the monitor on the desk, and handed her an open beer.
“Doesn’t it worry you that you sit with your back to the door?” he asked and took a sip of his beer.
“What?” She looked over her shoulder into the hall. “Why would it?”
“Most people wouldn’t sit with their backs to the door. Spend a day in the DA’s office and you’ll never sit with your back to the door again.”
She shrugged and sipped the beer. It was imported and expensive tasting.
Luke’s eyes scanned her desk. “You still write checks by hand.”
“I do.”
“You know, if you had a laptop, you could take it upstairs and you wouldn’t have to come down here at night.”
“If I did, that would be true.” She picked up the elastic band and raked her hair back into a ponytail.
“Why’d you do that?” he asked.
“Do what?”
“Pull your hair back. It looks pretty down. You should leave it down.”
Lanie picked up a note pad and wrote: 1.
Move office chair
. 2.
Don’t write checks by hand.
3.
Get laptop.
4.
Wear hair down.
She tore the sheet from the pad and handed it to him.
“Anything else?”
“What?”
“You’ve been in here less than two minutes. You haven’t even said hello but you’ve criticized me about four things. I thought you might have some more suggestions to improve my life.”
Luke let out a long defeated sigh and folded the paper into a small square. “Apparently I don’t even know how to have a conversation anymore.” He ran his hand through his hair and closed his eyes. “Dear Lord.”
In spite of her residual anger, Lanie felt a little sorry for him. “Why don’t you try again?” She settled back and crossed her legs.
Luke’s eyes dropped to watch her foot swing back and forth. He smiled a little. “Let me wash your face. Here’s your vitamin. Drink your milk. Do you need to go potty? Is that better?”
Lanie laughed a little in spite of herself. “It’s all still directional but I guess that’s who you are.”